Suite Spot: A Hotel Marketing Podcast podcast

July 10, 2024 141 – Hospitality Campus Crawl: Florida International University

In this inaugural episode of the TMG Hospitality Campus Crawl series, the Suite Spot takes a trip down to Miami to visit the Chaplin School of Hospitality & Tourism Management at Florida International University to meet with the Dean of the School, Dr. Michael Cheng.

Host Ryan Embree sits down with Dr. Cheng to discuss the high-ranking academic institution and how it is preparing the next generation of elite hospitality professionals.

Tune in now!

Episode Transcript

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Ryan Embree:

Welcome to Suite Spot, where hoteliers check-in and we check out what’s trending in hotel marketing. I’m your host, Ryan Embree. Hello Everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Suite Spot. This is your host, Ryan Embree. We are here in Miami, Florida, south Florida, introducing a brand new podcast series. We’re so excited. This is TMGs Hospitality Campus Crawl, and we are here at our first stop at FIU’s Chaplin School of Hospitality and Tourism Management. And with me today I have Dr. Michael Cheng, Dean of the School. Thank you Dr. Cheng, for being with me.

Dr. Michael Cheng:

My pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m very excited.

Ryan Embree:

Yeah, we’re very excited to be on here. This is an intro into a brand new series, a summer series that hopefully we are gonna be touring all around the state of Florida, the great state of Florida, where tourism, as we know, is very, very important to our economy. And what you and your team are doing over here, Dr. Cheng, is very important because you’re creating the next generation of hospitality workers and students out there. But before we get into that, this is your first time on the Suite Spot. So welcome. We’re gonna be talking a lot about hospitality journeys in this and the paths that are provided for hospitality students right now. But share a little bit about your story, your journey in hospitality, and what led you to FI’Us, Chaplin School of Hospitality and Tourism.

Dr. Michael Cheng:

Sure. Thank you, Ryan. Yeah, so the truth is, how I got here is spring break, literally my wife and I, came down for spring break one year same year that we ended up moving down here, which was 2014. And we go, man, this is March. And the world is beautiful. We should like relocate. We were living in the Midwest at that time. Yeah, we were living in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and had been in the Midwest for oh boy like 23 years. Yeah. So it’s been quite a while. But coming down here, the weather was very nice, but really I’m an international student. I was born and raised in Malaysia and came here to the US to study and enrolled at the University of Nebraska Lincoln. And my first major was not hospitality, it was MIS And I quickly realized that I’m more of a people person and less of a computer desk person. So I changed major, followed a bunch of friends who said “Hey, let’s try business.” So I did business for another semester, didn’t like it because I couldn’t find a direction. And then my supervisor at that point because I was working in the residence of food service, say, you should look at hospitality, I think you might be good at it. So I said, what is hospitality? Right. And went over and met the professor and goes, well, you know, there’s restaurants, there’s hotels, there’s events, and you work in food service, anything you want, what you’re doing right now is hospitality. I said, okay. I tried it, I loved it. And I found, I think I found my niche, finished my bachelor’s, and she asked me to come for my masters. So I did, became a graduate assistant. And then I started working in the industry for three years as a food service manager. And really discovered, man, everything is true. This is the industry that you get to eat for free. Yeah, never had to pay for lunch, you know, not too bad, which is very nice. At that point, then I kind of got a little bored with what I was doing. So started looking around and found that a community college metropolitan community college at Mond, Nebraska had a position and they were looking for somebody to come in and basically run the kitchens. So I applied for that job, and that was my first floor in higher education. I didn’t start teaching right away because that was not the plan. The plan was to, you know, do what I love, which is hospitality. But there was one semester, like maybe two years in, and they were short, or one of the faculty members couldn’t teach a class, so they were looking for somebody last minute. So they asked me if I would be willing to teach an introduction to culinary arts class. I’m like, sure, how hard can it be? Right?. And there was only nine students in it anyways, a small class. I couldn’t cancel, it was too late. And they say, we’ll guide you. Here’s the syllabus, here’s the content. Week by week before you teach a class. I go through it with you. This is the faculty talking to me, and then we’ll prep you for the class of that week. I say, well, great. So you know what I did the first week of class, I forgot I had class. I was late in my own first class. And I got there like 30 minutes later and they go where were you? I’m like I’m sorry brand new instructor, online stayed with me and finished with me. So I was thankful for that one. It was during the time at a metro community college that the faculty say, you should go to this conference and see what they are about. And it’s called Research Chefs Association Conference. So I went and I found out there’s a very nice intersection between culinary arts and food science and their collegeology. I came back, I was all excited about it, and then the guys who ran the RCA, the Research Chefs Association said we’re looking for a school to develop this brand new discipline. Can you help us? Like, sure, we have culinary arts, it’s a culinary program, and my alma mater has food science. I was like, we combine the two. So I created a curriculum for ocology that was back in 2000. Today it’s in use in over 12 different schools internationally. But what really got me the opportunity to move on in my career was because I created a curriculum and my next employer, which is Southwest Minnesota State University, they were looking for somebody to launch a ology program. So they reached to ask me if I was interested. Of course, I said, yes, you know, here’s an opportunity to actually implement a curriculum that you develop in action. So I said, yes, took the job. And the president, they also said, well, you have a hospitality background, so why don’t you do both ology and hospitality, and of course foolishly I said yes. So there I was running a program creating from scratch, two different programs, and because of that opportunity, I was able to get tenure at Southwest Minnesota State University and became the full professor there. And then and I was serious about whole spring break. My wife and I came and we said, this is gorgeous weather. You know, we should look around here. That same year I was at a conference with hospitality educators and I overheard this group of guys talking about food science, and that got my attention. So I stuck my head into the conversation, asked them why were they talking about food science? And they go, well, you know, we’re the chaplain School hospitality and tourism management at Florida International University. And I said, where’s that in Miami? So my eyes lit up. So suddenly Miami comes up again in the same year, literally within a couple months. And this was the conference. So then I applied for the job, came down here and that was it. Literally three years later I was asked to become the interim dean, and then that was at the end of 2017. So I’ve been in the dean’s role since I guess end of 2017, almost seven years now.

Ryan Embree: